Posted in: Comics | Tagged: frank d'armata, greg pak, HRL, joe caramagna, marvel, weapon x, x-men, X-ual Healing - The Weekly X-Men Recap Column, Yildiray Cinar

X-Men: Bland Design – Making Santo Marco Great Again in Weapon X #13

Published Wed, 17 Jan 2018 17:00:11 -0600

by Jude Terror

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Welcome to Week 2 of our new ongoing column answering the question "What if Ed Piskor had no art skills, a juvenile sense of humor, and less classic material to work with?" That's right, it's X-Men: Bland Design! This week there are five X-Books on the stands, which will cost you a total of $20 to read, but deliver about the same story content as a single issue did for 25 cents forty years ago.

Here's the plan: Just as Ed Piskor is condensing decades of X-Men history into a few issues in X-Men: Grand Design, we're condensing a week's worth of X-Men comics into several clickbait articles, in which we'll likely make the same repetitive complaints about how comics have changed for the worse while getting more expensive. This week, we've got X-Men: Gold #20, Weapon X #13, All-New Wolverine #29, Generation X #86, and Deadpool vs. Old Man Logan #4. You can see read every X-Men: Bland Design column going back to the very beginning (which was last week) at this link.

Let's take a look at Weapon X #13…

Weapon X #13
Writer: Greg Pak
Artist: Yildiray Cinar
Colorist: Frank D'Armata
Letterer: Joe Caramagna
Damage: $3.99

We're joining the Nuke-Clear War storyline with Part 2. A team of Wolverines and quasi-Wolverines consisting of Old Man Logan, Warpath, Domino, Sabertooth, and Lady Deathstrike have just rescued the friends and family of mutants from a military camp/drug manufacturing plant, but Sabretooth stayed behind to kill a group of super-soldiers with the powers of the supervillain Nuke who have been given adrenaline pills and radicalized by reading Donald Trump tweets. They call themselves the Nuke Patrol. Sabertooth has trouble taking them all on, but he finds some backup — the original Nuke, Frank Simpson. Together, they're about to make Santo Marco great again.

Up in the mountains, the Wolverines stop to mourn mutants killed by the military when one of the civilians, Acero, explains that simply killing the bad guys isn't enough; he wants them to help overthrow the government. Warpath is all for this plan, but the other Wolverines debate the socio-political ramifications of the act. They agree that destroying the Nuke facility is the first step of any plan, but before they can proceed, explosions begin at the base. Sabretooth and Nuke are @#$%ing @#$% up. Nuke is pissed that everyone is stealing his gimmick, so he starts cutting off their faces, to Sabertooth's delight.

The team joins the fray, and Logan is dismayed to learn that Sabertooth unleashed Nuke. Sabertooth thinks Nuke is great, and Logan decides to accept it as a distraction while he and Lady Deathstrike destroy the pill factory. Meanwhile, Domino, Warpath, and Acero are robbing a bank as a "distraction," but when the forces leave the bank to focus on the pill plant, Domino is forced to abandon her prize after Warpath uses his sexuality to convince her to help out the others.

Sabertooth also convinces Nuke to help out by telling him the Nuke Patrol are trying to steal his drugs. Nuke makes the save, but before Logan can thank him, Nuke accuses Logan of trying to steal his stash too and starts attacking everyone while reciting Trump campaign promises.

Warpath kicks his ass, so Nuke teams up with the Nuke Patrol, which, honestly everyone should have seen coming. But really, who's to blame for all this violence? There's good people on both sides. Both sides. Things look dire for our heroes, but Sabertooth has the solution and a great cliffhanger. The team can prevail if they take the Nuke pills. What harm could come of that?

This comic is all violence and yelling, and exactly what you'd expect from a Weapon X comic. Nobody is winning the Eisner here, but you knew exactly what you were getting into.

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